For this week’s blog post, I am choosing to respond to Ana María Ochoa Gautier’s “Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia”. In the reading, Ana María Ochoa Gautier shows how listening, writing, speech, and music were important to the constitution of modern individuality in the nineteenth century. Using Colombia as her central point because she is Colombian and talks about the many artists that are from Colombia. Ochoa states “listening appears as the nomadic sense par excellence and the voice as highly flexible, an instrument that can be manipulated to position the relation between the body and the world in multiple ways,” (Ochoa, 1). This made me think about the study of anthropology listening to other people culture. Listening is a product of ethnographic encounters; it involves layers of interpretation and observation. Anthropologists use ethnography to better understand as much as possible about a culture. You have individual methods which helps ethnographers which includes participants, observation, interviews and surveys. All of these ethnographic methods play a major role in gaining a deeper understanding of different cultures. I think it’s importance to study other people culture and learn something new.

Work Cited
Ochoa Gautier, Ana María. Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. Duke University Press, 2014.

The story I chose to focus on, was Winston’s “Wireless and Radio”. Why reading the first couple of pages, all I kept thinking to myself was “wow, a lot of people have ‘invented’ the radio.” But then as I continued to read, I couldn’t help but think to myself how far we’ve come with technology; more specifically wireless products. On page 70, Winston writes “Wires attached to kites would probably allow for messages to be sent transoceanically.” Although headphones don’t send messages transoceanically, it still does the job. I, along with many many people, have thought to myself so many times how it is that with just a little wire on our headphones, sound from the digital source its connected to circulates. Or for anyone who now has airpods. We connect it to bluetooth, but how is it exactly we’ve been able to create this kind of stuff? Cellphones can be thought about in the same context as well. Growing up, of course people had cell phones (like my mom did) but I was always used to seeing those home phones that connect to the wall and the wire to the phone part itself. As time progresses we see constant changes and never sit back and think about how exactly these type of things happened; we just kinda go with the flow and let it be.

1. For this week’s blog post I decided to write about “The Capture of Sound” by Brian Winston. In this article,  Winston gets into the detail of how the capture of sound and radio began. On page 33 of the article, Winston states that “The first electromagnetic device which converted electrical waves into sound is credited to a Dr C.G.Page of Massachusetts in 1837.” This quote highlights the origin of electrical waves that create sounds, which started way back in 1837. If we fast forward to current day society, the advancements we have made shows that there are so many different devices that capture and project sounds. To the music that plays from the bottom of our phones to the surround sound system that is a normality for movie theaters, we continue to evolve. Instead of talking on the phone, we are able to send voice notes, or talk on facetime, this is a new way to project sounds with a more easier approach than ever before. The only issue with the advancement of technology is how we are casting out face to face interactions. The rise of the smartphones changed the way we project sounds, there is a whole possible way to have a voice conversation with another without calling their phone. Dr. C.G Page was credited for the first electromagnetic device that created sound from electrical waves back in 1837, and all the technological advancements we made wouldn’t be a thing without this breakthrough.  

Brian Winston. “The Capture of Sound.” Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. Routledge, 199

For this week’s response, I will talk about Brian Winston’s article “The Capture of Sound”. In this article, Winston talks about the invention of the telephone. He starts the article with “it is unlikely that Philip Reiss, researcher into Helmholtz’s wave theory, was particularly looking for a system to transmit the human voice”(Winston, 1998). I find this interesting because, from the time when the telephone was invented to modern technology now, society has advanced very far. The invention of the telephone led to many things. We went from the telegraph to wireless and portable phones.  Not only new technology but new ways of communicating with each other. However, this is a good and bad thing. Back when the telephone was invented, people used that and communicated face to face. Nowadays, we have more than the telephone to rely on for communicating with other people. The boom of the telephone ultimately influenced this change in how we communicate with others. The only bad aspect is that we rely a lot on technology to communicate with others which I will guess was not the idea back when the telephone was first invented. It was made to use for communication and to expand on that, however, in today’s society it has expanded at an alarming rate.

 

Brian Winston. “The Capture of Sound.” Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. Routledge, 1998.

All my life I was told not to use wikipedia as a trusted source when it came to doing research and writing papers. I never had an issue using wikipedia as a place to get some quick information on something. For this assignment I posted an Albanian flag since there weren’t many pictures of it. I wanted to use a picture that I took of the Albanian flag myself. Wikipedia did not let me use it because it might have been someone elses work when in fact it was not. I started to get frustrated because I really wanted to use it but then, I gave up. It was so interesting to see how easily you can change pictures and information on a source that millions of people access every single day. I still trust wikipedia I think it takes a lot to put false information, there are guidelines and precautions that Wiki takes on what you post. I’m sure there is some information that is false or misinterpreted but for the most part I think it’s mostly accurate. I still wish I could use that picture because it is my own picture that I took in Albania this Summer!

For this week’s blog post I chose to write about Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan. This article struck my interest because I grew up in a time that technology was just starting to advance. Computers were starting to become smaller, laptops were being introduced, ipod and iphone was introduced, T.V.’s were becoming plasmas etc. My generation knew what it was like to go outside and play everytime there was a school break, computers were used once in a blue moon for homework only, schools didnt really use computers either. Now, technology is accessible for anyone at any age. I think it is important for the newer generation of kids to read about this or watch this. We have smartphones that can do anything with just a click of a button. You can research and find anything, you store your entire life in a smartphone. We have grown so attached to phones and computers that sometimes you get anxiety when you dont see your phone. This year alone I went to Albania two times each way was 12 hours then I went to Jamaica. I was so itchy to use my phone because I kill time when I am on my phone. I read the news, I go through my pictures, I go on facebook or instagram etc. It just shows you how much weve grown to be so attached to something so small yet its the biggest part of our lives.

I know from personal experience that transcriptions can be very challenging. People simply speak at a much faster rate than we can write or even type. When communication transitions from orality to literacy there’s a lot that can be lost or misunderstood. It’s the same reason I prefer calling or talking in person over texting. Because it’s not what you say, its how you say it. Simple things like sarcasm, aggression, or sorrow simply require more effort to communicate through writing. While completing the NYPL oral history assignment it was obvious that the technology that automatically generates transcripts needs to be improved upon. But what struck me most was the consensus percentage points on some of the stories.  It just goes to show that even though we might all be presented with the same material the interpretation of this material isn’t always going to match.